The first Thurday in February is the best day to wear a sweater for our neighbor to the North. It was National Sweater Day in Canada on February 1.
Since 2010, WWF has encouraged more than a million Canadians to show their support for limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius by turning down their thermostats by the same amount (or more) and wearing their favorite sweaters to stay warm.
February 4, 1961 –
United Artists' film The Misfits, directed by John Huston, (written by Arthur Miller,) and starring Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift, went into general release on this date.
John Huston was often late to the set after spending all night gambling. Clark Gable took it all in stride. He was ready when called and simply waited with his script open to the page being shot that day. When someone asked if the lateness upset him, he said, "No, it doesn't drive me mad. Of course it would be better if we did start. But I'm being paid for it, very handsomely."
February 4, 1966 -
The Rolling Stones released 19th Nervous Breakdown, on this date. It goes on to reach No.2 on both the US and UK charts.
The title describes how Mick Jagger felt during a US tour in 1965. He explained in a Rolling Stones interview: "We had just done five weeks hectic work in the States and I said, 'Dunno about you blokes, but I feel about ready for my nineteenth nervous breakdown.' We seized on it at once as a likely song title. Then Keith and I worked on the number at intervals during the rest of the tour. Brian, Charlie and Bill egged us on – especially as they liked having the first two words starting with the same letter."
February 4, 1970 -
Twentieth Century Fox's film Patton, directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, (written by Francis Ford Coppola,) and starring George C. Scott premieres in New York on this date.
Initially, George C. Scott refused to film the famous speech in front of the American flag when he learned that the speech was going to come at the opening of the film. He felt that if they put that scene at the beginning, then the rest of his performance would not live up to that scene. So director Franklin J. Schaffner lied to Scott and told him that the scene would be put at the end of the film.
February 4, 1977 -
American Bandstand 25th Anniversary Special airing in primetime on ABC-TV on this date.
(Sorry for the quality of the video)
The show features one of the first "all-star jams," as Chuck Berry is joined by Greg Allman, Junior Walker, The Pointer Sisters, Charlie Daniels and several others on a performance of Roll Over Beethoven.
February 4, 1977 -
Fleetwood Mac's Rumours album was released 47 years ago on this date - it's hard to believe.
Many of the songs on the album show a darker side in the lyrics. It's asking you to move on, leave the singer alone. Fleetwood Mac was experiencing the shatter of all of their emotional ties with not one, not two, but three break-ups! That was the divorce of the McVies, Buckingham and Stevie Nicks breaking up, and Fleetwood going through a divorce from his wife.
This was another album my sister and I wore the needle on the record player out on.
February 4, 1979 -
Co-Ed Fever, one of the three series that attempted to capitalize on the success of the motion picture National Lampoon's Animal House, (the others were ABC's Delta House and NBC's Brothers and Sisters,) had a special preview on CBS-TV on this date.
The show had such poor ratings that it was cancelled before it's scheduled premiere date of February 19. The show has been ranked no. 32 on TV Guide's 50 Worst Shows of All Time.
February 4, 1984 –
British group Culture Club second song released off their second album, Colour by Numbers, Karma Chameleon reach No. #1 on the Billboard charts on this date.
Culture Club were sued for plagiarism in this song by the writers of Handy Man, a 1960 hit for Jimmy Jones. Boy George admitted, "I might have heard it once, but it was certainly not something I sat down and copied. We gave them ten pence and an apple."
February 4, 2007 -
Prince performed at Super Bowl XLI, in the pouring rain and giving what is arguably the greatest Halftime show performance on this date.
February 2, 2012 -
Adele becomes the first female British artist to have three #1 songs from the same album top the Billboard Hot 100 chart when Set Fire to the Rain hits the top spot, following Rolling In The Deep and Someone Like You from the album 21.
Many of the songs on 21 are about the heartbreaking ending of Adele's first real relationship. She told MTV News in an interview to plug the album's release: "It broke my heart when I wrote this record, so the fact that people are taking it to their hearts is like the best way to recover. 'Cause I'm still not fully recovered. It's going to take me 10 years to recover, I think, from the way I feel about my last relationship. It was the biggest deal in my entire life to date. He made me totally hungry. He was older, he was successful in his own right, whereas my boyfriends before were my age and not really doing much. And he got me interested in film and literature and food and wine and traveling and politics and history, and those were things I was never, ever interested in. I was interested in going clubbing and getting drunk."
Another book from the back shelves of The ACME Library
Today in History:
February 4, 1861 -
State delegates met in Montgomery, Alabama, to form a Confederate government on this date.
Do you think Hallmark has a card commemorating this event?
February 4, 1889 -
Harry Longabaugh was released from Sundance Prison in Wyoming, thereby acquiring the famous nickname, The Sundance Kid on this date.
February 4, 1902 -
Isolationist, racist, neo-nazi and early environmentalist Charles Lindbergh, first man to fly solo across the Atlantic, was born on this date.
Kind of complicated guy, don't you think.
February 4, 1912 -
Franz Reichelt (alias The Flying Tailor) designed an overcoat to fly or float its wearer gently to the ground like the modern parachute. To demonstrate his invention he made a jump of 60 meters from the first deck of the Eiffel Tower, at that time the tallest man-made structure in the world.
The parachute failed and Reichelt fell to his death. The jump was recorded by the cameras of the gathered press. Winner of the 1912 Darwin Award.
February 4, 1913 -
Each person must live their life as a model for others.
Rosa Lee Parks, civil rights activist whose refusal to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Alabama started the Civil Rights Movement, was born on this date.
February 4, 1918 -
Nobody fucks with Ida Lupino
Ida Lupino, actress, director, and a pioneer among women filmmakers was born on this date.
February 4, 1948 -
Vincent Furnier (Alice Cooper), rocker and avid golfer, turns 75 today.
Yes, we're all not worthy.
February 4, 1972 -
Senator Strom Thurmond sent a secret memo, on this date, to William Timmons (in his capacity as an aide to Richard Nixon) and United States Attorney General John N. Mitchell, with an attached file from the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, urging that British musician John Lennon (then living in New York City) be deported from the United States as an undesirable alien, due to Lennon's political views and activism.
The document claimed that Lennon's influence on young people could affect Nixon's chances of re-election, and suggested that terminating Lennon's visa might be "a strategy counter-measure".
February 4, 1974 -
Patty Hearst heard the burst of Roland's Thompson gun, and bought it.
Newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, 19 years old, was kidnapped in Berkeley, California, by the Symbionese Liberation Army on this date.
February 4, 1983 -
Karen Carpenter died of anorexia nervosa on this date. She frequently took laxatives and induced vomiting to prevent weight gain.
At the time of her death she was pencil thin. Lead graphite thin.
February 4, 1987 -
Pianist/jewelry wearer Wladziu Valentino died in Palm Springs, California due to complications from AIDS on this date.
Nobody ever suspected the man was gay.
February 4, 1998 -
Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates was assaulted with a direct hit by a fluffy cream pie during a three-pronged attack in Brussels. He was in Belgium attending meetings with industry and government leaders.
Rumor is that the attack was engineered by Noel Godin, infamous for his other pie throwings at government officials.
February 4, 1999 -
In NYC, plainclothes police officers fired 41 shots at Amadou Diallo, a Bronx street peddler and immigrant from Guinea, who was unarmed in front of his Bronx home. Police were searching for a rapist and Daillo was killed with 19 gunshot wounds.
Officers Kenneth Boss, Sean Carroll, Edward McMellon and Richard Murphy were later indicted (but ultimately cleared) for 2nd degree murder.
February 4, 2004 -
Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard University student, launched "The facebook", as it was originally known, on this date; the name taken from the sheets of paper distributed to freshmen, profiling students and staff.
Within five years of its founding, Facebook had more than 500 million users. And if you think I'm going to say anything more, you're nuts.
On February 4, 2008, at 00:00 GMT, NASA transmitted the Beatles song Across The Universe in the direction of the star Polaris, 431 light years from Earth. The transmission was made using a 70m antenna in the DSN's Madrid Deep Space Communication Complex, located outside of Madrid, Spain. It was done with an "X band" transmitter, radiating into the antenna at 18 kW. (This may be on the test.)
In case our overlords on Nibiru are Radiohead fans, here's a tune for them
Should our alien overlords come from Planet X, hopefully David Bowie will plead our case, now that he is back home.
And so it goes
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